St. Pete Athletic expands pickleball courts, adds padel in warehouse district

St. Pete Athletic just widened its footprint in the Warehouse Arts District with a 20,000-square-foot expansion that pushes the club to about 50,000 square feet and adds padel alongside more pickleball. At 680 28th Street South, the indoor venue now holds 14 pickleball courts, six professional table tennis tables and new padel courts, a sign that St. Petersburg’s racquet-sport scene is no longer growing in just one direction.

That matters because this is not a fresh concept trying to prove itself from scratch. St. Pete Athletic first opened in December 2025, after nearly three years of planning, and it arrived as a 45,000-square-foot sports, dining and social project with a restaurant, bars, a membership lounge, a pro shop, a garden and courtside food-and-beverage service. The latest buildout shows the club is already moving beyond launch mode and into expansion mode, with management betting that the market can support more than one paddle sport under the same roof.

For amateur pickleball players, the clearest takeaway is what this mix says about court access. More square footage should mean more opportunities for bookings, leagues and coaching, especially for players who want indoor play in a climate where heat and weather can make outdoor time less predictable. At the same time, adding padel means the same facility is now serving a broader racquet audience, so prime-time slots in the Warehouse Arts District may become more competitive even as the total number of options grows.

The padel side has already been treated like a milestone. The club held a public grand opening for the padel facilities on April 25, after members got an advance preview the weekend before. That kind of rollout suggests St. Pete Athletic sees padel as more than a novelty add-on. It is another way to keep players on site longer, and to draw in people who may come for one sport but stick around for another.

The bigger market signal is how closely the club is tracking the rise of both games. St. Pete Catalyst cited the International Padel Federation’s figure of more than 25 million padel players worldwide, while The Global Pickleball Report puts regular pickleball play at about 22 million. In other words, St. Pete Athletic is not just adding courts. It is positioning itself at the meeting point of two fast-moving sports, and in St. Petersburg that could reshape where casual players spend their court time, their coaching dollars and their post-match hours inside The Factory.